Cooliris Launches on Android - TheNextWeb

Cooliris, the service that puts photos from multiple social networks in a single place, has finally come to Android devices today, nearly two years after launching for iOS in July 2012.

For those not aware of it, Cooliris links up to media from more than 15 services, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Dropbox, Flickr and others. The idea is to provide a unified gallery experience to share content with friends and browse photos — the service has over 40 million registered users across Web and mobile in the US, which is its largest market.

Initially ‘Liveshare’, a Web only service, the company made the media hub a separate service for mobile and it has spent the past 18 months localizing it for overseas markets — pairing with local partners in Russia and China, and adding other media sources. CEO Soujanya Bhumkar is optimistic that the Cooliris Android app will continue to help it gain significant usage overseas.

“An Android app has been by far the number one user request worldwide,” he told TNW in an interview. “Especially from users based in Asia, where Android devices sometimes account for 80 percent of smartphones in a given market.”

Cooliris for Android initially requires Android 4.1, but Bhumkar says the company is working on pushing out a series of updates in the coming weeks that will bring more stability and expand support to devices running older versions of the Google operating system.

Despite the high level of Android devices in Asia, the Cooliris CEO believes that iOS will continue to account for the majority of the users of the service, for now.

“The US is still where the majority of our users are based. China will be a wildcard and, depending on how it goes, that could change the numbers. However, I expect that iOS will continue to lead for now, although Android will drive significant adoption.”

Cooliris claims that users of its iOS app have connected more than four billion images to the service, of which one billion came in the last six months. Bhumkar says that the iOS app has seen over six million downloads, and that more than 30 percent of app-based users are active on the service each week.